


Perplexity of Mind

by Anonymississippi



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-07
Updated: 2014-10-07
Packaged: 2018-02-20 07:48:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2420810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymississippi/pseuds/Anonymississippi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Broody and tightly-wound introspection of the roommate variety. Carmilla considers Laura, and Laura tries to figure Carmilla out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perplexity of Mind

_And in low faltering tones, yet sweet,_

_Did she the lofty lady greet_

_With such perplexity of mind_

_As dreams too lively leave behind._

I can never figure her intent.

It’s difficult, and troublesome. For my objective has been set before me for decades, centuries and ages to cyclically repeat. And no matter this life or the next, men and women will resolutely flirt with the line of my patience and yet, this woman, no, this girl, this… _child_ , toes it and crosses it and runs the tread of her flat shoes across it, until nothing is left but the residue of erasure and suddenly there’s no need for patience because the line is nonextant. I can’t find it in myself to lay a hand on her, as I can’t fault her for _existing_. Instead I tease and I steal, play at a cynicism I’ve never truly felt.

She reminds me of her—reminds me of—reminds me, as if minding me, again and again, could turn me into something I’m sorely not. I have seen much of the world and its relentless, revolting greed, so forgive me if I remain utterly baffled by genuineness and courageous passion and some queerly justified naïveté. Forgive me if the odors of her pillow remind me of stardust.

* * *

 

 I have the worst freaking roommate on the planet.

A of all, she takes my pillow. _My pillow_! The place I conk out after another eighteen-hour workday; the one with the yellow pillow case Dad let me pick out; the cushion that I cried myself to sleep on when mom died; and okay, maybe it’s where I drool a little in the mornings. Just a little. Hardly a smidge. But there’s a sacrosanctity to plush, yellow-covered headrests that normal people know not to violate, if they know what’s good for them.

And B of all, she’s a rude, lazy sociopath, possibly responsible for multiple kidnappings, who possesses the dubious hygiene of someone who resided in Eastern Europe during the dark ages. _And_ she might be a vampire.

Well. Perhaps the reason under A of all should be shunted to second position, since, you know, B of all has repercussions that extend outside of my dorm room and A of all makes me sound like a whiny child which would only substantiate her claim that I am… a child.

Which I’m not!

Pardon my French, but… she’s a sucky roommate.

* * *

 

As recompense for my initial discourtesy, I’m making attempts at cordiality. Don’t misunderstand, I am not in any way inordinately cheerful, or even genial. But her habits don’t interfere with my own schedule. I do not desire the loss of an adequate roommate due to my crass and careless attitude. She would undoubtedly be replaced by a drunken lackwit, ineffectual in all but what passes for ‘society’ in today’s collegiate milieu. She is… sincere, a lost quality in many, if you take the opinion of one who has lived for too long.

She was cruel, but only briefly, and talked with me after my…I will not call it a scolding, because I am no toddler. I cannot recall what innocence feels like, or even wonder. My musings are those of a realist, not infinite, child-like faith. I am not inept, but somehow subordinate. So for the Dean in this life—or Mother in a previous one, or Madame or Mistress or Major or whomever in the next— so for her to come and reprimand me in such a fashion, within earshot of Laura… it seemed to serve more to my personal embarrassment than to remind me of my place.

Ours is a contract. I will fulfill my duty. It does not give Madame Dean the right to humiliate me if I perform my task with reluctance.

Pattern and indebtedness do wear upon a per—being, after centuries.

Laura and LaFreak and Mother Perry misinterpreted the exchange, but it was exceedingly kind of the foremost to console me afterwards.

And yet my obligation stands.

Eavesdropping on the conversations of simpletons produced more ideas than I thought it would, in the avenues of cordiality.

So I brought Laura a mug of cocoa.

I had none of my own to give, but perhaps the gesture will be appreciated despite my lack of forethought. She seemed to need it, and so I prepared it. The girl—the one who went missing, SJ, I believe—and the fellow she was clinging to like a fungus… SJ said the Neanderthal had prepared cocoa for her. I will not be shown up by a sub-human, I, who am more than human.

The charm I cannot pretend was solely for her benefit. It truly disconcerts me to see her so shaken and troubled in sleep. I know how important sleep is, for mortals and non-mortals alike, how perilous and fluid the dreamscape. It’s the one safe haven we possess that eclipses death and lucidity. So when dreams invade like cockroaches underfoot, and the subconscious asserts itself in ways we’d rather it hadn’t, a charm… well, it’s a trifle to create with my resources, and the only effort it takes to attach it to her slim wrist is the quelling of my pride.

And, in the spirit of full disclosure, I would rather her not hear me cry again.

* * *

 

It’s true.

My roommate is a vampire.

I mean, it makes sense, but at the same time, it _really_ doesn’t. I toyed with the idea ever since the bloody cereal incident, but come on! This is the 21 st century, so there’s probably some parody app out there for vampire extermination. No one would make an actual app that could…

I need to find my idea binder.

Anywho, it was a notion I didn’t care to indulge when it first crossed my mind, but between the incontrovertible video evidence, Danny’s worrisome pleas and LaFontaine’s endless requests for hair samples ( _remember, you have to get ones with the roots attached, so check it when you clean out the drain!_ ), it’s a notion that has morphed into a theory which is steadily snowballing into full-blown universal law.

Carmilla is a vampire.

And I’m her roommate.

But…

And I know, there shouldn’t be a ‘but’. There’s no excusing this, from what I’ve read, and there are several gruesome techniques (not found in an app, thank you) we could use to dispose of one Carmilla the Vampire.

But…

Okay, hear me out. If she’s behind the kidnappings, I will go Van Helsing on her leather-encased backside quicker than you can say ‘Buffy’. But we don’t have proof, nothing that isn’t circumstantial. And… and it’s sort of hard to want to, you know, _kill_ her after her recent attitude shift. And we’ve considered it, me and Danny, that she might only be being nice to me because I’m her next victim. But… and here’s the real reason for it: she didn’t give Beth, or SJ, or any of the other girls presents. She didn’t _move in_ with them. And there’s nothing special about me, so… all I’m saying is, she may be a horrible vampire, but that doesn’t make her a horrible person.

If that makes any sense whatsoever.

It’s just… she’s broody, and caustic, and spouts irrelevant philosophical nonsense at the witching hour, but I remember one afternoon she was high on metaphors and started talking about an anchor. Well, I’ve seen that necklace she wears. The silver anchor, or white-gold, or, I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s real, cause I held it.

And that sucker is heavy.

So my reason for the ‘but’, the reason I have misgivings about the whole ‘luring Carmilla into a trap’ plan... is maybe there’s some, like, weird thing that’s weighing on her, that makes her look at stars and get very… romantic, for lack of a better word. It's as if she would be happy to blast off into space and just chill with those stars if only that anchor wasn’t tied around her neck, keeping her sullen and earthbound.

So, maybe Carmilla is a vampire, but… what if Carmilla isn’t all that bad?

* * *

 

I thought verbal decimation at the hands of Madame Dean was the height of humiliation. I curse myself now, with rope burns on my skin and garlic in my nostrils and cramps in my stomach, and wonder if I ever truly knew humility until this moment.

I mistook her completely, and this is my twisted penance for acting on poor judgment.

I forget girls of this age are susceptible to charms, but simultaneously suspicious of charming motives. Common girls are smart, and Laura is anything but common. I should have known, should have suspected, shouldn’t have let my infatuation blind me so fully to the nervous twitches and stuttering words.

She _hates_ me.

And I… I cannot truly die from starvation, but I am not immune to discomfort and exhaustion.

I am not immune to pain so intense that I convulse and quake. The pain that gnaws at coherency and drags me into a state between consciousness and comatose, some osmotic barrier of wakefulness I only cross whenever she sees fit to address me.

On morning five I reached the point of blissful delirium, when all I could see in my mind’s eye were stalking panthers in starlight and pillowcases of daffodils asking for viewers and Laura in her celestial virgin’s garb, crying bloody tears onto my sagging jaw. But she is not remorseful so much as uncomfortable, caught between morality and ethics and a gut instinct I know she will not act upon at the behest of her freak squad. If she had disregarded the greater good and acted on instinct alone, she would have sipped the champagne I offered instead of hastily dispensing of the flute. She would have touched me, instead of sitting stonelike in that ridiculous rolling chair. She would have spoken, and revealed… _something:_ whatever it was her heavy hazel eyes were whispering instead of giving quippy dismissals to my advances.

She would have kissed me.

Instead, I sit and wait, and endure questions I am not fit to answer, _cannot_ answer under bonded oath. Questions that she hurls at me with outrageous conviction. She places the pointed tip of her crudely whittled spatula-cum-shiv above my breast, but she never touches my skin.

And her eyes still whisper when we’re not surrounded by the gaggle of gingers, and she sleeps in my presence as if unconcerned. I am a hostage of hapless imbeciles, and have moved past rage and onto disappointment. It is disappointment that I cannot articulate, not to Laura, not to anyone, concerning my unusual, reluctantly enacted deeds since the start of term. It is too complex and even now, I would spare Laura that.

For she is working toward what she thinks is good, which is ignorant and brave and stupid and admirable in so many ways… and more than I have ever done.

* * *

 

I’m an idiot.

As in, I don’t know how I had enough I.Q. points to actually get into University, if tying a vampire up in my room with nothing but some shoddy garlic necklace and a wooden crucifix of utensils was the brilliant idea I went along with as opposed to calling… well, who? Ghostbusters? Father Patrick? Dad? Maybe the Wiccan society on campus could do something, and then there’s always campus police…

It really doesn’t matter now.

Because, to add fuel to the fire of general idiocy and confusion, Carmilla actually… _likes_ me. As in, ‘I don’t want to hold you down and drink you dry, but holding you down hasn’t been crossed off the list if you _want_ me to hold you down’ type of ‘likes me’. If Danny hadn’t flown in when she did, it might have gone there.

Not to the ‘holding you down’ there.

But that moment where the right side of Carmilla’s eyebrow would lift skyward about a centimeter, and the corner of her lip would follow, and that damned… _darned_ , smirk that’s just as sexy as it is infuriating would’ve overrun her features and I’d be left feeling… well, completely at a loss, which is what I’ve felt since the second she burst through the dorm room door.

Which leads us to day nine, hour four, of Carmilla tied up and helpless, no matter how weird that combo of subject and adjective seems to my ears. She’s forfeiting her health at the expense of her stubbornness. And it just… it just doesn’t _add up_. I made some hasty judgments in the beginning. I mean, I called her the roommate from hell! Which, in hindsight, was 100% accurate, but that’s neither here nor there. What I _do_ know about Carmilla is that she’s sort of… well, lazy. She only goes to her classes so she can argue with her teachers. I never see her doing actual assignments; and she has no constructive hobbies to speak of, aside from partying and nocturnal wanderings and amateur stargazing, which, honestly, I don’t see requiring a lot of effort. She eats what’s in front of her, which is mainly _my_ food. Sure, she’s got her erythrocyte-infused soy concoction, but I really don’t want to know how she gets that.

The entire point I’m trying to make here is that _effort_ comes about as naturally to Carmilla as top-shelf reaching comes to me. So why is it that she’s putting so much effort into _not_ talking?

I know I shouldn’t be worried about her, not when I’m using torture as a means of information extraction. But I can’t _help_ it, because she wore that damned— _darned_ , anchor necklace and her head is drooping and the rope knots and garlic bulbs and rolly-chair make her seem weak as a human. The seizing must have knocked whatever obstinate plug was lodged in her brain loose, because she confessed to—I’m not quite sure. Seduction, I guess? Liking me and, uhm, wanting to—well, it doesn’t really _matter_ what she intended the other night. It’s not like I stew over it. I don’t. Really. And I’m not protesting too much! It’s just… she’s a vampire. And, c’mon, it’s not like I haven’t thought about it, what with me playing both sides like some double agent. Because when Carmilla is alone with me and the girls aren’t feeding me outlandish theories, it doesn’t... she doesn’t seem like anything more than an intense, clever and— well, _damaged_ girl.

I don’t feel sorry for her. I don’t!

If she’s guilty, I mean. If she’s innocent, and there’s some evidence to support that, then maybe I do. Maybe I don’t have to feel so bad about rushing to give her that mug of blood. Maybe I can stop kicking myself for wanting to untie her and hug… I mean, help her.

**Author's Note:**

> The opening quote comes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Christabel. Because Laura didn't get Coleridge-y, so I'm taking that as a challenge to get a little Coleridge-y. This sort of presupposes an acknowledgement of Laura from the original novella, but isn't completely necessary? At least, I don't think? Anyway, first time writing for this fandom, or even on this site. I hope you guys liked it. Takes place pretty much throughout the series until episode nineteen.


End file.
